


Conviction

by LyricalLyrium



Series: Redeeming Cullen [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-07
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2019-01-10 04:47:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12291573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyricalLyrium/pseuds/LyricalLyrium
Summary: He had wanted to protect people.Set after the Broken Circle quest. A look into Cullen's motivation for being a Templar, and how the torture in Kinloch Hold twisted that desire.





	Conviction

He had wanted to protect people. 

Cullen dreamed of becoming a Templar ever since he met the Templars who had come through Honnleath when he was a child - proud warriors, strong and kind, tracking down an escaped apostate. The woman hadn’t hurt anyone, wasn’t a blood mage. She just wanted to be outside, she said, and she went back with the Templars easily enough. It was a worthwhile calling, to keep Thedas safe.

Even once he started training, all he thought about was protecting others - protecting the non-magical from maleficar, and protecting mages from demons and an outside world that didn’t care to see them unrestrained. Magic was meant to serve, so clearly the Maker had a plan for His mages. Clearly they were meant to be protected from demons by the Templars.

But by the time he was sent to Kinloch Hold, he let his guard down. The Circle system was good, he’d convinced himself. The mages were mostly good people. They could rule over themselves, intervention needed only when the bad few strayed from the Maker’s sight - 

He’d been a fool. 

He knew, now, the horrific treachery of magic, the things mages could be, the things they _are_ when given the slightest bit of power. 

Cullen held on to this surety, fiery and bright and burning, knowing it was the only thing sustaining him through this endless torture. The demons forced him to watch as they slaughtered the others, his siblings in arms falling, one by one, succumbing to the will of the mages. 

But he would not break. 

The visions they showed him of Amell were all wrong - wrong, now that he knows what would have come from indulging his idiotic fascination with the girl. His stomach twists each time it takes a new form of Amell before him, growing to hate the woman as much as he hated the demons. 

Even when she comes - and of course she would, he realized in hindsight, the fool couldn’t keep herself out of trouble - her mistaken attempt at heroism only strengthened his newfound conviction. Defending blood mages, telling him she’d save anyone she could… there was no human left to save in that Harrowing chamber. The entire walk down from the tower he was silent, ignoring the mages crowing over Amell and clinging to his revelation of purpose as though it were the only thing keeping him going. 

Mages are inherently evil. Magic does nothing but harm. This is the reason for the existence of circles, the existence of templars. Magic was made to serve man - and it was the templars' job to enforce that. 

At the bottom of the tower she spoke to Irving, safe and smiling and even laughing, as if their home did not lay in ruins, as if his brothers and sisters did not lay dead, tortured - 

She turned her gaze on him, and he felt his face curl into a sneer. It was an ugly thing, the feeling he got looking at her now. There had once been admiration, infatuation. Now he felt - revulsion. He finally understood why so many have a hatred of magic. Why parents send formerly beloved children away without a thought, once their magic is made known. 

Magic ruins everything it touches. 

The man who stood next to Solona - another Warden, he supposed, but the man was in templar armor - looked at Cullen uneasily. He put a hand on the mage’s shoulder and whispered something to her. She shook her head, gaze fierce as she said something to him, and she broke away from his hold to approach Cullen. 

“Cullen,” she said, voice almost steady. He didn’t miss the slight quiver she'd been trying to hide. Even still he knew her too well. She asked, “May we speak?”

“No,” he said, a cold satisfaction filling him at the open heartbreak on her face. “I have nothing to say to you, mage.” 

“Please,” she entreated, her eyes growing misty. He’d seen her cry before, even wanted to comfort her, but those memories seemed from another life. “Cullen, I -”

“Enough,” he said, watching her mouth twist into a thin, miserable line. Compared to the false Amell the demons had shown him, this one looked almost plain, though perhaps it was because he was finally seeing her without the lens of affection. This version of her had freckles, from being out in the sun, he noticed, and immediately hated himself for noticing. “Your business with the tower is done.”

“What about my business with you?” she asked, voice challenging in a way it had never been with him when she was an apprentice. She was such a stubborn thing, and Cullen strangled the small tendril of affection he felt, ill at the thought that this mage could ever manipulate him again. 

“As far as I care, you’re a Warden trying to end the Blight,” he said, offering her nothing in return for her searching gaze. He wanted her to hurt. Wanted to twist her until there was nothing left, to break her as he had been broken. But if the stories were true, and she was one of the only Wardens left in Ferelden… With effort, Cullen tore his gaze away from Amell and looked over at the man, whose face was lined with worry. “Your… companion awaits.” 

She stayed another minute, eyes searching. Finally, she gave up, murmuring, “Maker keep you, Cullen.”

He watched her go, the burning white conviction he’d felt in his prison strong as ever. 

He wanted to protect people. 

It had taken him too long to realize that mages aren’t people.

**Author's Note:**

> This series will, eventually, get around to some positive character development for Cullen. It just makes no sense to me that, after the conversation you can have with him when he's trapped up in the cage as f!Amell, down at the bottom of the tower he's totally chill with you. I know they had to make it fit with all the origins, but I think this fits a little better into his overall character arc.


End file.
